


Come On Home

by followthefreedomtrail



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Protective Arthur Morgan, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, no TB
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2020-12-16 10:28:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followthefreedomtrail/pseuds/followthefreedomtrail
Summary: ‘Damnation, as it happens, catches like the flu. Consumes everything and everyone around him like a fire.’In which Arthur Morgan is passionately in pursuit of [a last good thing] to hold to.





	1. I. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> Would you look at the time. It’s been a whole year. A y e a r. Insanity. Happy anniversary, Red Dead Redemption II. You have ruined my life and I will always be grateful.
> 
> Not my usual style. I’d never written Arthur’s POV before this and was going for an Arthur’s journal kinda vibe because my style doesn’t fit him.
> 
> A hundred thousand million thanks to tiesthatbind1899 and arcjets for reading and editing and talking about how much you love Arthur with me.
> 
> xoxo

The day is sunny and warm as Arthur steps out onto the platform to board the train. He cannot recall the last time he was an honest to goodness passenger. Usually, he enters a car masked, there to take what isn’t his.

Now, he’s using the train the way law-abiding citizens do. He is out of his element and suitably tense. He smokes a cigarette for as long as he can. Right up until he hears the whistle and he is out of time.

The first train car is full, as is the second. He sees one seat empty in the third and looks around for any other option. He prefers to sit alone, if he must travel by train. But he gets strange looks for hesitating so he sighs and approaches the woman and hopes he doesn’t look as rough and mean as he feels.

“Sorry, ma’am, would you mind if I…”

“Of course not.”

She has a friendly voice. Arthur does not expect the way it sets him at ease, but somehow, it does.

He sits beside her and mumbles, “thank you.” His boots are caked with mud and sun-bleached. Beside her own pristine black boots, he looks a mess, and Saint Denis–well, he guesses that’s just about how he looks amongst the well-to-do folk. If he didn’t have business in the city, he would not ever return.

The train struggles out of the station and picks up speed. Arthur fidgets restlessly.

The woman pretends to read and he pretends not to notice the curious looks she gives him over her book. But he does and he fears the worst. That she knows he’s wanted, seen his face before.

The brim of his hat can only conceal his face so much. He tips it lower in vain.

“You aren’t from here.”

He looks over to find the woman shamelessly studying him, the way he does the scenes he intends to draw. He doubts she has such intentions.

“Saint Denis, I mean,” she says. “The city.”

“No, ma’am. Ain’t really from nowhere.”

“No man has ever been from nowhere.”

There’s a spark in her eyes that he recognizes. John used to ask far too many questions, most just to irritate him. Arthur had taken to clocking him on the side of the head when he did that. John still questions things far too much so he supposes it hadn’t come to anything.

But this woman does not seem to want to bother him. She just wants answers, and Arthur can’t rightly look for too long at her big, bold, curious eyes and not appease her.

“I don’t know. Everywhere, then, I guess.”

She nods with a slight curve to her lips. “Everywhere and nowhere.”

Arthur cannot help but chuckle to himself. It sounds sheepish, embarrassed. He’s a rotten actor. “I–well. Yeah.”

“A traveling man with no luggage and an old hat with bullet holes in it.”

He looks at her with his mouth half open, seeking some defense. She just stares at his hat.

“Travelin’ is rough,” is all he can think to say.

She tilts her head and her eyes are still narrowed in judgement. They look him over in a way that makes him feel exposed. “Mmm.” She purses her lips. “I’m afraid I haven’t traveled enough to know. But… well, I imagine. Where are you off to now, then, Mister...?”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Uh. Morgan.”

And then he waits for recognition but it never comes.

“Mister Morgan. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

She extends her hand and a small and trusting smile. And because he does not know quite what else to do, he shakes her hand.

“Sure.”

“Tallulah Montgomery.”

“Right then, Miss Montgomery.”

She looks out the window for a spell. Arthur pulls out his journal and has half a mind to record this encounter but he has a feeling she hasn’t run out of questions. So instead, he sketches. Trees, mostly. One of the passengers that falls asleep in a strange position.

“Do you use those?” Tallulah asks.

When he looks up, he sees she means his guns. She eyes the handles with fascination and not near enough reservation.

“Sometimes,” he says.

“For hunting.”

Arthur hesitates. “Sometimes.”

Tallulah does not appear to know what to think of that but he does know she is not afraid. She doesn’t flinch or bat an eye. “I haven’t shot a gun before myself.”

“Don’t reckon you’re missin’ out on much.”

“My mama detests the things. Says they only destroy, but my brothers carry rifles. I don’t see the fairness in that.”

He lights a cigarette and hums. “Oughta listen to your ma.”

“And what if I need to defend myself?”

“Ain’t you got a…” Arthur pulls the cigarette from his mouth and breaths out a stream of smoke, “husband or pa or somethin’?”

Tallulah shakes her head. She looks quite angry, her eyebrows furrowed like that. “Well, I… I don’t see how that matters. I currently find myself unattached. And I’m alone on this train besides, aren’t I? I should be armed.”

“You even know how to use a gun?”

“I... would learn to.”

“Learnin’ needs to happen before or the only person you’ll shoot is yourself.”

She takes what he says and thinks on it while he finishes his cigarette. “Well… maybe you’re right. But I’ll need a gun first, then, won’t I? And here I am, back to my same problem.”

Arthur looks at her when she is not paying attention, when her eyes drift back to the scenery, troubled though they are. She has a young face; he wonders how old she really is. Certainly too young to be preoccupied with violence.

Too young, he thinks, and too good. Too unlike himself in every way he can tell and that stirs a protectiveness in him.

“You have two,” she says.

“Oh, no.” He raises his hands. “I ain’t gettin’ involved in this.”

“I’ll pay, of course.”

“Yeah, and so will I. I ain’t startin’ trouble with some rich man I ain’t even met before.”

“You would pass up sixty dollars?”

He pauses and she smiles a little. Thinks she’s gotten her way. But he shakes his head and laughs. At himself, mostly, for hesitating at the mention of payment.

“How much do you want?”

“Answer’s no,” he says.

Her face falls and it tugs at something in him. He feels wrong, not helping her, but it would feel wrong, too, to put a weapon in inexperienced hands.

He does not want that on his conscience.

They don’t speak again. Every so often, he looks to his side and sees her lost in thought and unhappy. There is a pang of regret that comes with that.

He almost apologizes but he bites his tongue.

When all the other passengers are filing out of the car, neither of them move.

Arthur leans forward with his hands on his knees. He rubs his hand down his face and thinks better than to bother her again, even with an explanation. He stands, but Tallulah catches his arm.

“Wait. Mr. Morgan.” She looks at him then with hard, persistent eyes. “Seventy.”

He sighs.

“I won’t hurt myself. I promise I will not even use it until I get myself proper lessons.”

Arthur looks outside, at the crowd of people, and back to Tallulah. “This is a bad idea.”

“One you’re considering, all the same.”

“You don’t even know how to shoot the damn thing.”

“Not yet,” she concedes. And when he still looks hesitant: “Eighty. Please–it’s all I have.”

Arthur closes his eyes, curses himself. But the profit margin for a stolen gun is tempting. Almost as tempting as avoiding her sad and stormy eyes that will surely come if he tells her no.

_ Morgan, you fool. _

“Jesus.” He pauses. Another sigh falls from his lips. “You don’t use it ‘less you _ need _ to,” he says quietly, sternly, “and you don’t point it at nothin’ you ain’t willin’ to kill, you hear me?”

Her mouth twitches and her eyes shine. “No recreational gunfights. No murder,” she agrees.

The revolver is cold and cautioning against his skin. He turns it over, inspects it. Weighs it in his hands and feels the heaviness of all of this settle in his bones. “Why you want this thing so bad anyway?”

She goes real quiet at that. A dreadful feeling comes over him, like he has poisoned something good.

“Don’t really matter,” he amends, dipping his head, “ain’t my business anyway.”

“I– well. I guess I’d just sleep better knowing I– if something happened,” she starts, and never finishes.

Arthur nods. “Sure.”

They are alone in the train car. No unwelcome eyes to see the exchange.

No witnesses to trace it back to him and no one but God aware of Tallulah’s bribery.

“Here.” Arthur hands her his revolver, handle toward her. She takes it slowly, softly, with so much care and even more naïveté. He closes one of his hands over hers, and there’s concern passed in that brief gesture. He does not know what she plans to use it for but he believes her, that she needs it. “Keep it clean or it won’t do you much good when you need it.”

She holds it like it’s a fragile thing. There’s respect in her fingers when they trace the barrel. Half of her mouth lifts and she presses the gun into her purse. Her fingers come away with bills that she thrusts toward him.

“Don’t. Keep your money,” he insists. Arthur rises from his seat, hands going to his gun belt like they do when he does not know what to do with them.

He pretends not to see the dumbstruck look she gives him as he walks away.

She follows him off the train, taking long strides to match his pace.

“But… we made a deal,” she says breathlessly.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, then, for your trouble.”

He’s shaking his head, words on his tongue about how it _ ain’t no trouble _, but they are torn from him with the glimpse of two men.

“Ah, shit,” he mumbles, because they are most certainly O’Driscolls.

She looks over her shoulder. “You know them?”

That question breaks him away from the men and brings him back to her. He does not know what to tell her. She is not so stupid to believe he does not know them, but she is yet uncorrupted. And Arthur, he’s a damned man.

Damnation, as it happens, catches like the flu. Consumes everything and everyone around him like a fire.

So he does not say anything. He thinks she’s caught on, he just is not sure how much because she does not look as disgusted as he thinks she should.

All of that in the span of a few seconds–and when he looks up, the O’Driscolls are long gone, disappeared in the bodies milling about.

He searches frantically for them with no luck. “_Damn it_.”

“Mister Morgan?”

He holds her shoulder, this woman he may have as good as killed. Young and good and trusting, but guilty by association. “Go on home, Tallulah.”

“Who are they?”

“That ain’t you concern, now go on home.”

Something flares in Tallulah’s eyes. She nods. “Pleasure to meet you, Mister Morgan.”

She walks toward a bench, where a man is smoking. They embrace and he escorts her to a coach and Arthur looks on, thinking of a lifetime of rights and wrongs that must be atoned for.

And then he stalks off after phantom O’Driscolls, to find his peace in their graves.


	2. II. Matters of Further Entanglement

Arthur tries to wash his hands of the girl. Jobs come in and distract him well enough for a week. Oddly enough, it is Lenny that reminds him of her most.

Lenny, passing him a half-drunk bottle of whiskey, laughing at some ridiculous thing or another from Javier’s mouth.

It’s a black night, but there are sparks in the air from a fire and plenty of booze. There aren’t so many reasons to laugh anymore but Lenny finds them. Despite the suffocating air camp has taken on, he does not let it crush him.

Maybe it’s youth. Maybe Arthur had what Lenny did and lost it in so many years of sin. And that elusive quality is what he tries again and again to put down on paper.

Tallulah never really comes out right.

“Who’s that?” Mary-Beth teases when she glimpses his many failed attempts.

Arthur grunts and closes his journal. “No one.”

“You sure do draw her an awful lot.”

“Like I said, she’s no one.”

Mary-Beth just smiles. “Sure, Arthur.”

He does look in on her, only to set his mind at ease. Or rather, he buys a paper and scours it for news of–he does not really know what he is looking for. Kidnapping, maybe. But he finds nothing, anyway, and he nods to himself. There’s a release knowing he had probably not gotten her killed.

That night, he sketches by the light of the campfire. Hosea and Charles sit a few feet away but no one speaks. Arthur enjoys that sort of company: the quiet, understanding type. Though eventually, he does get tired of his own thoughts.

“How you feelin’ about the city, old man?” Arthur asks to break up the silence.

“Civilization. What’s not to love?” Hosea says dryly.

Charles snorts. “Plenty.”

“Sure is easy to pick pockets, though, in all that chaos.”

“That’s what you been doin’?” Arthur asks. “This whole time, you been stealin’ spare change?”

Hosea’s smile lines come out easier in his old age. Seeing them makes Arthur’s throat a little tighter, reminds him just how long they’ve been running together. “Don’t start with me, Arthur, you sound like Dutch.”

He brushes the accusation away. “Ah, I ain’t Dutch.”

There’s a pause–intentional and loaded. “He’s scheming bigger and bigger. I’m afraid he’s getting careless.”

“Dutch knows what he’s doin’. He ain’t never steered us wrong.”

“Except for Blackwater,” Charles says quietly.

And neither man has anything more to say, because Charles is right. He is wise and quiet and observant and he sees what is happening. Sees the future, maybe, and knows what’s coming.

Really, Arthur does too. He just does not want to speak it.

He draws an x over his drawings and starts over on the next page. One line, and then the next, and a thousand after that Arthur hopes will add up to an accurate recreation of the picture in his mind.

He examines it when he is finished. When everyone else has long been asleep.

It is then that he sees Dutch, stares down at his likeness, and realizes he has become a stranger to him.

* * *

Arthur does not like this city. Does not really like any city, but God damn Saint Denis especially.

There are poor everywhere and the rich pass them with high and prideful chins. The sight makes his fingers twitch.

There were days when he and Dutch and Hosea and John would rob them blind and distribute the money to widows, families, orphans. These days, all they seem to do is take. And what has it gotten them? There is never enough to outrun their problems, never enough to disappear, never goddamn  _ enough _ .

Arthur empties his pockets into a beggar’s hat discreetly, or he tries to, but she grabs his hand as he retreats.

“God bless you, sir,” she sniffs.

He looks away and pulls his hand back. “Madame,” he says and starts back down the street.

His pace is quicker when he flees, rushed for no reason. There’s a lawman on the street corner that looks at him a little too long and Arthur curses his foul luck.

He turns into an alley. Can’t risk being recognized here, when he’s come so far. With so many people relying on him. When he can nearly taste  _ freedom _ and with Dutch’s promises ringing in his ears.

But, then, his luck turns a sickly sour. A man leans against the wall, a rusty knife twirling his hands, and he sets his sights on Arthur.

“You lost, friend?”

Arthur straightens his spine, braced for an attack he is sure is coming. “We friends?”

“Not really. Not unless you got somethin’ for me.”

His hands feel strange,  _ sore _ without a gun in them. The second they move toward his holsters, though, the man is on him, grappling, pushing against Arthur’s hands and trying to sink the knife below his ribs.

Arthur grunts, hands shaking as he tries to keep the blade from his stomach. It slices below the skin before he thrusts the man back and the knife clatters to the ground.

The man does not leave. His knees are bent and shoulders square. “Empty your bag and we ain’t gotta do this.”

“Not a goddamn chance in hell.”

He grimaces and charges Arthur, knocking him to the ground and all of the air from his lungs. Arthur’s back feels bruised. He blocks two punches and lands one of his own on the man’s chin with a nasty crack.

Arthur puts up a good fight until the man catches him in the eye. It stings and Arthur’s hands come up to guard his face. By then, the thief is gone with his satchel.

Arthur rests a few moments on the cobblestone, groaning and cursing himself, that man, the whole despicable city before he finally drags himself off the ground.

The alleys are damn mazes. Arthur turns corners and loses his sense of direction, can’t hardly even tell which way he came in.

His swelling eye does him no favors.

“This goddamn city,” he growls under his breath.

By the time he makes it back to a street, he’s almost certainly lost. He looks around for a building he remembers, trolley tracks–anything he might know. Anything to help him orient himself in all this mess.

Nothing looks familiar. Everything is cramped together and it all bleeds into each other. His saving grace is that someone recognizes him and calls his name.

“Mister Morgan!”

He turns, though on second thought, he thinks he should not have. It’s as good as an admission, if any law is watching.

“Morgan,  _ you fool _ ,” he curses himself quietly.

He  _ is  _ a fool, giving out his real name.

She walks closer and stops in front of him, smiling and out of breath. Then, when she sees his injuries, she gapes and her tone morphs into one of shock. “ _ Mister Morgan. _ ”

He looks down. One of his hands finds his swollen lip. Between that and the brim of his hat, he hopes she cannot see how terrible he looks.

“I… really, I did not expect to see you again. Not like this.” Her fingers easily pry his away. The corners of her eyes crease as she looks him over.

He waves her away. “Ain’t nothin.”

“What’s happened?”

“Common thief. Ain’t nothin’.”

Tallulah’s hands, concealed in gloves, press gingerly around the corner of his mouth, where it is split and still bleeding, and beneath his eye. Arthur flinches slightly at the tenderness but he lets her examine him.

“What were you doing?” She eyes the alley he’s just come from with confusion.

“I–I don’t know,” he admits, scratching awkwardly at his jaw.

He has already given away too much. 

_ You’re a goddamn idiot _ , he scolds himself, because he can see she has her suspicions. He is a terrible actor. Hosea has told him as much on multiple occasions, never lets him forget it.

She hums thoughtfully and stares at him. At his beat up and broken face, but does not look put off.

Instead, she tells him, “Let me clean you up.” She tugs on his hand and leads him down the street.

He cannot reason why he does so, but he follows.

“Really ain’t gotta–”

“No,” she says, “but I want to. I do owe you, Mister Morgan, and you won’t take my money.”

He is not sure what to say to that. What he does know is that no matter what he says, Tallulah is sure of herself. So he simply nods and resigns himself to be fussed over.

She holds to his arm the way all ladies of society do, and Arthur straightens his spine without thinking to.

She is good and proper, Tallulah. He does not want to look rugged beside her, though he does.

And people always take notice.

There are so many eyes on them. Tallulah does not seem aware, but she is too observant to be truly blind to the attention they are receiving. He thinks it more likely that she is willfully ignoring it.

She pulls him through a door to a saloon. It is mostly empty; one man sleeps at a corner table, hand still clutching a bottle, and another is drinking at the bar.

“Bit early, ain’t it?” Arthur asks.

Tallulah gives him a look, half amused and half stern, and he tosses his hands up in surrender.

Arthur sits at a table while Tallulah argues with the bartender.

“Whiskey,” she says, followed by the clatter of a coin.

“Grief, Tallulah, you know I can’t be–”

“Give it a rest, Nathaniel. It’s not for drinking.”

There is a break in the conversation. From the corner of his good eye, Arthur sees the bartender sizing him up.

“He your chaperone?”

“...yes.”

“Jesus. Your daddy won’t be none too happy with me, Lulah. But–fine. Here. Don’t tell nobody and don’t  _ drink it. _ ”

Tallulah returns to the table with a shot glass. She pulls a hanky from her clutch and douses it with alcohol before she presses it tenderly to his face.

It stings but Arthur does not even twitch for how used to it he has grown. She almost seems confused by his lack of reaction, but then continues, dabbing the fabric across his broken skin.

“How’s that gun?” he says, just for something to say.

She looks to the side and he cannot see her face. After a moment in thought, she shakes her head. “Unused, thus far.”

“Well, it ain’t for everyone.”

“But it is for you?”

Those questions–accusations, whatever they are really–always sound like statements from her mouth.

He frowns beneath her steady hand, still hovering near his lips.

Tallulah does not have enough fear to do what’s good for her. He takes it upon himself to help her along. He does not much look straight at her. Every time he does, it is always strangely terrifying. But he tries to now.

She looks back, undaunted.

“You don’t know me, Tallulah. Don’t you start thinkin’ you do.”

She drops her eyes, though not for long. Soon, she is back to tending his wounds.

They both know that Tallulah knows a good deal. That Arthur does not have to say things for her to know them.

“Don’t be rough on it while it heals,” she says. “Avoid alleys, maybe. That’s a start.”

Arthur laughs but does not smile.

The man at the bar has been mere background. Maybe Arthur would not have noticed him at all, were it not for the commotion he makes as he’s leaving.

He is angled toward the door, but he stops by Tallulah’s chair on his way out. She freezes. Goes pale and stares at the table like she is listening, waiting for something. But the man, he does not say anything.

Finally, he spits at her feet–causes Tallulah to flinch–and then he makes his drunken exit.

Arthur is so angered by the gesture that it surprises him. He watches to make sure the man really leaves. “Real friendly folk ‘round here.”

Tallulah’s eyes are closed. When she opens them, they are angry and wet. One tear rolls down her left cheek but she quickly wipes it away.

“Hey, there... Don’t–don’t cry.”

She does not respond.

Arthur has never particularly been good with crying women. He does not know what to do with his hands, if he should reach out and touch her or not, so he doesn’t. He keeps one on the table and one in his lap.

She casts an anxious glance outside and then stands, brushing her skirt down.

“Let me walk you home,” Arthur offers.

“Okay. Fine.”

She holds to his arm again and this time, keeps her head low. He follows her lead through the city and they walk until the buildings are sparse. They pass extravagant houses, sprawling gardens, and he realizes that somewhere, one of these impressive homes must be hers.

The house she takes him to is on a big patch of land. There are trees all around it so thick, he can’t hardly see the swamp just beyond it.

She stops them just before the front porch. Without looking at him, she says, “Thank you, Mister Morgan.”

“Sure.”

He hesitates to leave. He thinks about asking if she’s safe–really safe. Tallulah does not really look scared–only mad–but her voice sounds it.

“Teach me how to shoot,” she suddenly asks.

“Really ain’t good for you to be around me, Tallulah. I’m sure you can find someone else.”

“If I can’t?”

He stares at her and sees the desperation on her face. He wants to say he will. Maybe that’s what he  _ should _ say. But all he can think of is O’Driscolls, or Pinkertons, or the mess Tallulah is in all on her own and how much worse he would surely make things.

“I can’t help you,” he tells her, and covers her hand with his. “I’m sorry.”

She nods and flushes, looking somehow angrier. “Okay, then. Take care, Mister Morgan.”

“And you, Miss Montgomery.”

Watching her walk back to her house, he sighs and cannot help but feel all of his options are wrong.


	3. III. Impressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listen to a lot of music when I write and The Chain by Fleetwood Mac is a current inspiration. Pairs well with this fic.
> 
> xoxo

Arthur has a bath in town and stays the night in a room that smells like dust. He spends most of the evening smoking through half a pack of cigarettes on the balcony and writing in his journal when he feels the compulsion to.

His thoughts are everywhere. They sound that way on paper, too. He is torn, in every sense of the word and in every way a man can be.

He does not go back to camp for two more days.

Mostly, he realizes, to clear his head of Dutch’s words. They have started to feel empty. There is a dwindling hope amongst the gang that Arthur has been trying to keep alive. But when he is alone like this, he can admit he is no longer sure what will become of them.

He sells some things at the fence. Gambles a little, gets a trim and a shave. Wastes a lot of goddamn time on a park bench with only scribbles to show for it. Each night, he sees terrible and haunting things behind his eyelids.

And when he returns, the air at Shady Belle feels worse. Dark and heavy and too thick to get a good breath.

He smokes around the campfire, and keeps on thinking until his head hurts. Bill and Micah speak about the working girls in town lewdly. Arthur tunes them out as best he can. Javier offers him a beer, which Arthur accepts. They both have two more and then a whiskey, and by the time he stumbles to his cot, he is good and drunk.

His dreams, that night, he blames on the alcohol. They are especially awful, all dark and twisted. When he wakes, it is as if he has hardly slept at all.

He pours himself two cups of coffee just to keep his eyes open.

Sadie walks past him and smirks as she sits across the fire pit on a log. “You look like you seen better days.”

“Yeah, mornin’ to you too,” he mumbles grumpily.

“Been drinkin’?”

Arthur grunts.

“Well, drink some more coffee. Got a job for you today.”

“Ask John.”

“I’m askin’ you.” She gets up and starts walking to the house. He does not know for what. Her pistol has not left her side since she started carrying it and it rests comfortably at her hip now. “Besides, you’re a better shot.”

“ _ Sadie _ .”

“Half an hour, Arthur!”

Despite all his grumbling, he is ready and brushing down Ptolemy when Sadie approaches the horses. He does not ask what it is they’re even doing until they’re on the road.

The sun is too bright and it makes him squint. “What you got me doin’ anyway?”

“Feller told me ‘bout some Arabians nearby.”

“ _ Wild _ ?”

“Yes, wild. Good money, too.”

He shakes his head. “I ain’t tamed nothin’ wild in a while, Sadie.”

“Then I guess you could use the practice.”

There is nothing he can say to get out of this and Arthur knows it. He sure as hell will not let Sadie do it alone. Arabians are temperamental animals.

“Reckon the last wild thing I domesticated was… Marston, probably.”

Sadie snorts. “Fine work, Mister Morgan.”

His smile dies when she calls him that. “I don’t know about that,” he mumbles.

The ride is long and quiet to where the herd of Arabians is supposed to be. Sadie does not force conversation or ask him questions about his sudden sourness. They do not say much at all until Sadie points out the horses.

“There–see ‘em?”

“Yeah, I see ‘em.”

She pulls out a lasso. Arthur cannot fathom where she got it but does not put anything past Mrs. Adler. “We each rope one. I got a buyer lined up in Saint Denis lookin’ for two of these fellers.”

“Yeah, but how much is he willin’ to pay?”

“If they’re healthy? Seven hundred.”

Arthur whistles. “ _ Seven hundred? _ Jesus.”

“I know.”

He reaches for his own lasso and puts on the pair of gloves he keeps in his saddlebag. He follows her closer and they split as they near the grazing herd. Arthur sets his eyes on a black horse a couple dozen feet from where he waits, undetected in the trees.

Sadie throws her lasso first and Arthur follows seconds later. There is a whole lot of commotion as the others flee and the two that have been roped buck and rear, trying to escape.

Arthur keeps two hands firmly on the lasso. The Arabian resists, tugging harshly and whipping her tail around.

“Whoa, whoa,” he says calmly. “Easy. Ain’t gonna hurt you.”

The horse jerks frantically. He keeps talking to her in that soft way and each time she jerks, she uses a little less force.

The thing about horses is that they need to be convinced. Arthur is not so sure he can convince anyone of anything these days.

“That’s it. You’re okay, girl. You’re alright.”

It takes time–she is a bold horse if he has ever seen one–but eventually she is calm enough that Arthur dismounts. He slowly approaches her and her tail flicks nervously.

Arthur raises his hands. “Easy, there. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

He can hear Sadie cooing to her horse over the snorting of his. She seems to be faring slightly better than he is. His horse is a spirited one.

There can’t be more than four feet between them, Arthur and the horse, when she suddenly rears again.

He has to dig his heels into the ground to keep her from running. He grunts and sweats and curses his luck that he had to pick the goddamn stubborn one. “Sure gonna make me work for you, ain’t you?”

She settles down again after he speaks to her some more. Keeps repeating  _ easy, whoa, you’re okay _ . When he has managed to get close enough, he pats her neck gently.

“That’s a girl. You ain’t so mean.” He pulls an oatcake from his satchel and offers it to her. She sniffs it suspiciously and then nips at it. “Go on. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it.”

The horse takes it, then, and sighs. Arthur strokes her nose.

“You ain’t so bad at this after all,” he hears Sadie say.

“Guess not.”

They rest for a few minutes, just tending to their horses. Arthur swipes the side of his hand across his forehead and it comes away dripping. The back of his neck is sunburnt and warm.

He was tired before all of this. He cannot stifle the yawn that comes with knowing it’s a long ride home.

“They gotta be broke?” he asks her. “Can’t do all that in one day.”

“Man said Arabians. Didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout breakin’ em, too.”

Arthur chuckles and scratches at his jaw. “Okay. Well. How’d you find him, anyway? This buyer.”

“I can scout just as well as you men can.”

“Oh, I believe you. Hell, you’re already doin’ better than Bill.”

They laugh at that, and it feels nice. Sadie is good company. He has not felt so light in days.

“Arthur?”

The tone of her voice is an uncharacteristic and sudden sort of timid. He watches her pick her words with a pit in his stomach.

“Dutch… he’s–”

“I know.” Arthur turns his eyes away and swallows hard. “Believe me. I know.”

All the rest remains unspoken. Sadie just nods and leads the Arabian back to her mount. Arthur smokes through two cigarettes before he does the same and they start the long ride back to camp.

They speak once on the return trip, when Sadie asks him what he’s going to do when all of this is done.

Really, he is surprised she is thinking that way, when it took him so long to see the end coming.

“Me? I don’t know,” he admits. “Find some kinda work. Ranchin’, maybe. Hell, maybe I’ll tend bars in some nowhere town. What about you? You gonna go on back north?”

“No. That time… that’s all over,” she says firmly. “I was thinking I could... hunt bounties. That’s all I’m good at anymore. Killin’ folk. Might as well earn somethin’ for it. I reckon Colm O’Driscoll’s head would fetch a decent sum.”

“Most definitely.”

Absently, she adds, “You know, there’s a camp of those bastards. Right outside Saint Denis.”

Arthur feels cold and angry. He thinks about clearing them out all the way back to camp and then some. Wonders if he could do it alone. All through that evening, he smokes and stares at the map in his room and plots how to wipe them out. And when he falls asleep, he has more nasty dreams with plenty of O’Driscolls.

That next day, he goes to scope the camp out. He looks for hours but he does not find it. What he does find, around sunset, are a few empty cans and the smoldering remains of a fire.

There is no relief in that–in not knowing where they have gone.

He ought not be focused on such a thing. The Pinkertons, Lemoyne Raiders, they are far more pressing threats. So he robs and eats and does all the things he does to survive during the day. Does just as he is told to do. But at night, the nightmares come, and he cannot let it go.

So vivid and terrible are they, that he wakes one night and pulls his pistol on shadows.

When he realizes there is nothing and no one to shoot, he drops the gun and falls back onto his mattress to catch his wild breath.

He writes that one down with the rest of them in his journal. They are all just the same, except for where they happen. Sometimes, a swamp. Others, up in the mountains.

The outcome, though–that does not ever change.

He is tormented for a week until he decides he has had enough. He rides into town one morning and gets lost trying to find her house, but eventually he does.

Arthur does not even hitch Ptolemy. “I won’t be long, boy,” he tells him, and pats his neck.

He climbs up the stairs and then he stops, cracks his knuckles. Nervousness fills his stomach, though he does not know why.

“Just do it, Morgan,” he mutters.

He knocks.

A few seconds go by and then a woman answers the door. She looks immediately skeptical of him, and fairly so. He knows the way he looks.

“You got business here?”

“I, uh… there a Tallulah Montgomery here?”

She keeps a blank face. “Who wants to know?”

“Well. Uh, me.”

“Mhmm.” The woman eyes him up and down. “What’s your name?”

“Uh–”

From behind him, as he’s struggling to decide which name to give, he hears a deeply familiar, “Mister Morgan?”

Arthur turns around and there is Tallulah. In her riding clothes, no less, and looking quite confused.

“I was just sendin’ him away, Miss Tallulah,” the woman says.

“Why would you do that?”

She gives Tallulah a disapproving look. Alternates between glaring at Arthur and looking at Tallulah like she is out of her mind. “Stay outta the house,” she says after a long moment. “Just cleaned the floors.”

Arthur looks at his boots. The soles are muddy.

She tacks on a wary, “And… holler if you need anything, Miss Tallulah,” before she shuts the door.

Then, it is only him and Tallulah. She does not say one word. Just looks at him with big eyes and waits.

“I only… I just came here to say I…” He exhales in defeat. “I’ll take you shootin’.”

She nods seriously. “Okay. When?”

“First thing tomorrow, I reckon.”

“There’s a clearing through those trees. Just south of here. Good for that sort of thing.” Tallulah points and he follows her finger.

“Sure.”

In the silence that follows, he can hear everything. Every rustle of unseen animals, the wind in the trees. And Tallulah–she is so quiet that it forces him to look at her to search for some reaction.

“What changed your mind?”

Arthur’s mouth opens but all that comes out is a small, nervous laugh.

He never does give her an answer. Just shakes his head and walks to his horse and then he rides away because he does not want to tell her how she dies nightly in his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoy writing my own dumb missions for this story.
> 
> xoxo


	4. IV. Lessons in Gunslinging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know how much I would pay for a shooting lesson from Arthur Morgan?? I don’t either. It’s a lot, though.
> 
> xoxo

Arthur leaves camp bright and early. No one but Jack sees him stuffing extra boxes of ammunition into Ptolemy’s saddlebags, and he is too young to think anything of it.

He speaks up at last once Arthur is mounted. “Where are you going, Uncle Arthur?”

“Just into town, Jack. I won’t be gone long.”

“Okay.”

Jack goes back to playing with the sticks he has gathered around him. Hosea has taken to teaching him to read, but the boy is so restless that sometimes he will not sit to do his lessons. Creatively, Hosea has been having him write with sticks in the dirt, and it seems to hold his attention better that way. So much so that without even being told to, he is trying to draw his name with a twig he’s found.

Arthur chuckles to himself as he rides away, thinking on Jack and John and their tendency for mess and mayhem. Like father, like son, so they say.

Isaac would be just about that age–maybe he’d be learning to read, too.

It is a quick ride into Saint Denis from Shady Belle, one he wishes were longer. He is none too eager to thrust Tallulah headfirst into violence. 

He knows her house by now. There is a wrought iron arch in front of it–an ornate thing with a large and proud ‘M’ stamped on the center of it. He admires it for a moment, and all the money it surely cost, and then he hops down from Ptolemy to have a smoke, if only to delay the inevitable.

They do not have guards posted, he guesses because the men of the house carry. Still, he thinks they ought to.

Then again, the Braithwaites did, and in the end, it did not save them any trouble.

Arthur climbs back onto Ptolemy when he cannot drag time out any longer. He turns south, the way she had directed him the day before. It’s all humid and muggy the further he goes but the clearing, as it turns out, is not terribly far from the main road.

He finds Tallulah there, braids tumbling over her shoulders, sitting on the ground and running reverent fingers over that damned gun.

He clears his throat.

“Mister Morgan,” she smiles as she stands and dusts herself off. She only ever looks happy to see him and he does not know what to make of that.

His neck grows warm, and he rubs at the back of it. Foolish, really, that something so silly should have him all flustered.

He ducks his head. “It’s, uh… just Arthur.”

“If you prefer. Just Arthur, then.”

He starts rifling through his saddlebags. It is a convenient way to avoid her stare and the expectant way she looks at him so that he does not go fully red. “You about ready?”

“Sure.”

She does not look it. She looks slightly terrified and Arthur wonders if any of that is his doing. Wonders if she is scared of  _ him,  _ as she ought to be.

He goes to set up empty beer bottles at the edge of the clearing, where the trees begin. It’s the way he learned and the only way he knows to teach it.

When he is done, he watches as she fiddles with the gun, looking every bit like she does not have the first clue how to use it.

“You tell someone where you’ll be?”

Her eyes flick up to his quickly and do not break away, so he tries not to either. They spend a few seconds like that–just looking. Then, she huffs. “I have to do this. Stop trying to convince me otherwise. I have to.”

“Why?”

“Are you goin’ to teach me or not?”

“I said I would.”

“Then get on with it. My mind is already made up.”

Arthur sighs. “Okay, then.” He takes out the ammunition he brought and hands it to her. “Here. You need bullets first.”

That one sentence is all it takes for her to lose her momentum.

She takes the box hesitantly. He watches her stare at it, brush a thumb over it.

“You know how to load it, don’t you?”

Tallulah shakes her head.

“C’mere. I’ll show you.”

She watches with interest as he points out the chamber, shows her which way to put bullets in. All things he has known since before he even learned to read.

He does not like teaching her these things, but he believes that if he does, they will both have more peace.

Arthur makes Tallulah fill the rest of the chamber. It’s only three bullets, but she fumbles even with that. She drops a few and curses, worse than any woman he has ever met, and apologizes after every foul word. He tries not to laugh.

“Good,” he says, once she’s finished. “Aim it now.”

She stands the way she thinks she should. It looks clumsy to him, and that is saying something. He has terrible posture, and John even worse. But they do not miss when they fire.

“Loosen your shoulders.” Arthur looks her over and makes a concerted effort not to laugh. She is doing the best she knows how but her best just so happens to be highly amusing. “And bend your knees a little. You ain’t a goddamn soldier. Drop your chin–that’s it.”

She adjusts herself accordingly, gets frustrated again and curses and sighs. “I’m sorry, I– what in the hell are you laughing at?”

Arthur is only laughing to himself but he knows his shoulders are what gave him away. “Nothin’. Not a thing, Miss Montgomery.”

“Best not be at me.”

“No, ma’am. I would not dream of it.”

There is a smile playing at the corner of her lips as she tries a second time. She does better, does not look quite so stiff.

Arthur nods approvingly and steps up behind her. He tries not to touch her any more than he needs to, but he does notice the way her hair smells like flowers. “Okay. Now.” His fingertips and open palms sit lightly over her arms, directing her. “Lock your elbows. Good. Breathe for me. That’s it. Just keep breathin’–and line up your shot.”

Tallulah does everything she is told to. Her arms start to fall a little and Arthur pushes them back up.

“There you go. Hold steady now. When you’re ready, you breathe out and you pull the trigger.”

Arthur slowly lowers his hands. He decides she is doing just fine on her own, so he steps back a little to give her space. She does seem to have an awful hard time breathing, though. It comes out all ragged and too fast.

All in the same instant, Tallulah squeezes her eyes shut and looks away and pulls the trigger. The gun bucks up in her hands and then she drops it to cover her ears as she hunches over.

“Tallulah!”

He takes long steps towards her. One hand finds her back and the other grabs her arm to tilt her body towards him so he can look her over. There is no blood, no marks on her skin that he can see.

“Jesus, woman, what the hell was that?”

She speaks a little louder than she usually does. “ _ God Almighty!  _ I– It’s so  _ loud _ . I– I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting–”

“Christ, Lulah, you gotta look where you’re shootin’. You can’t be closin’ your eyes and droppin’ your weapon.”

“I didn’t mean to.” She straightens up, rubbing at the skin around her ears. It is hard for him to remember what it’s like, hearing a gun go off in your hands for the first time. “It was an accident. I had not ever… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’re okay, just… try it again.”

Tallulah does not look ready when he picks up her revolver and offers it to her. But she takes it anyway, despite the tremble in her fingers.

She takes her time and then shoots again. He adjusts her form and tells her over and over to breathe and each time, she gets a little better. A little closer to the bottle.

On her eighth shot, she shatters it.

She drops the gun again. Tallulah covers her mouth when she realizes what she has done but Arthur just chuckles.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Mister Morgan, I shouldn’t have dropped that, but I–”

“That’s alright. You did real fine.”

“I shot it,” she says to herself, admiring the splintered glass on the ground.

“That you did.”

He thinks she may smile, but she does not. She only grows more and more somber.

He rests one hand on her shoulder and points at another bottle. “Let’s try one more, see if you can’t hit it.”

She picks up the gun and aims it. Her hands shake something awful. She cannot line up her shot and eventually, Arthur cannot stand to see them quiver any longer.

He closes his palm over her hands and pushes the gun down. “We got time. Ain’t gotta do it today.”

Tallulah presses her lips together and frowns at the gun. He does not quite grasp why she fears it so. Arthur thinks about how he was taught. Or, he tries. It is all so long ago now. But he does not remember being quite as bothered as Tallulah.

“How you feelin’?” he asks.

She stays looking down so he has to tilt her face up with a gentle finger beneath her jaw.

Her eyes flick over his while she is thinking. They are warm and deep and unsettled. “Mis–I mean. Arthur.”

He waits for her to go on. Patiently, with his hand still against her chin. He notices just how much the sun has weathered his skin when it’s beside hers.

“How do you know that you will be able to shoot someone when you need to? Bottles are one thing. I do not mean to sound ungrateful, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe myself capable of killing a man now.”

He drops his hand. “Do you need to kill a man?”

The answer does not come right away, and when it does, it is small and fearful. “I may. I don’t quite know yet.”

“This got anything to do with that feller in the bar?”

She clenches her jaw and her hands tighten on the revolver.

Arthur grits his teeth. It is not any of his business. He knows that, but it does not do anything for his anger.

He has always known his death will be a grisly one. No doubt, like Davey and Mac and Sean, he will fall to a lawman’s bullet one of these days. Good folk like Tallulah, they are supposed to die comfortable in their beds surrounded by family.

They are not supposed to buy guns from strangers or fear for their lives.

“Nothin’s gonna happen to you, Tallulah,” Arthur tells her. He sounds sure, and he is. “You hear me?”

She nods and looks at him like she suspects what he means. But if she objects, she does not say anything.

Tallulah kisses him on the cheek and he looks down at his hands on his belt as his face heats up. She thanks him, tucks that gun beneath her shirt, and then she is gone and he has ample time to plot how he will solve her problems for her.

He waits in that dingy bar for three days before he sees that man again. Arthur stays in a corner and does not look up except to keep tabs on him. He stumbles out around midnight and Arthur goes out after him. When there is no one else on the streets, he drags the man into an alley and shoves him against the wall.

“Hell d’you think you’re doin’?” he says around a cigarette.

“Listen to me, you goddamn bastard.” Arthur slams him back against the wall to ensure he is heard, that his point is made good and clear. “You lay one finger on Tallulah Montgomery–you so much as look at her strange, I’ll know. And I won’t be happy about that. We clear?”

The man swallows loudly but he half-smiles and says, “She’s used up, y’know.”

“Quit talkin’.”

“Why, every man in Saint Denis must’ve had her by now. You can’t defend her virtue when she’s got none left.”

Something in Arthur–it does not snap. It has always been snapped. Bent and twisted and ugly. But he does not like this man and he is pushed to his edge so he throws a right hook and his cigarette falls to the ground.

Arthur almost puts it out with his boot. But instead he picks it up and decides that would be a waste.

“Christ–agh, what do you want from me?” He rubs his sore jaw. “You want money? Take it.”

“Nah, I don’t want your money. I want your word that you’ll leave Tallulah be.”

“She put you up to this? Goddamn whore. SON OF A BITCH–”

He struggles against Arthur as the lit end of the cigarette is pushed against his throat. Limbs flail, but he is too drunk to do much harm. Arthur would be a filthy liar to say it did not satisfy him a little to see him squirm.

When he lets him go, the man is a whimpering mess. He clutches at his neck and Arthur has to resist rolling his eyes.

He leans in close to this unnamed man. Just enough that he knows he is menacing. And then he tells him, “I hear you do anything to that woman, I’ll come for you. You breathe in her direction, so help me, I’ll find you and make you goddamn sorry.”

The man nods. “S–sure. I won’t.”

Then, he runs. Arthur doesn’t watch where he goes–he is staring down at hands that kill and threaten and thieve and remembers the way they looked against her skin.


	5. V. That Which Makes Men Crooked

The moment he gets back to camp, Dutch calls on him.

He hears a loud _ Arthur _from the balcony, and sure enough, there is Dutch, smoking a cigar. Once Arthur meets him there, Dutch hands him a cigar of his own.

Arthur lights a match, bites down on one end of the cigar and holds the flame to the other. “How you get on?”

“Just fine, my boy. Just fine.”

Arthur smokes quietly. He gives a little hum of acknowledgement but nothing more.

“We are gonna be okay, Arthur,” Dutch says slowly, his eyes far away and deluded. “All of us. I can feel it.”

But Arthur–he wants to believe Dutch. He does not want to think that this man, his father figure for all these years, could be well and truly mad. So he brushes that thought away.

He is no good at lying, but he can always fool himself.

Arthur just nods and looks out to the mountains, almost too black to see in the night. “Sure. Okay.”

“Tahiti, Arthur.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“We’re goin’ to Tahiti. An island in the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean–with no Pinkertons, no O’Driscolls… No problems.”

It does not sound real, but it sure sounds nice. Arthur wants to believe they can make it. Go off to some exotic land where no one knows them, buy land, make a life for themselves.

Dutch keeps looking at something in the distance—Tahiti, he guesses—but for the first time, Arthur cannot see what Dutch sees.

“That sounds nice, Dutch, but how we gonna get out of this?” Arthur asks him quietly. He is always quiet when he questions Dutch. “This whole mess we made, it don’t seem like we can outrun it the way we used to. And people keep dyin’–”

“No more,” Dutch says, and Arthur watches him skeptically. “No one else is gonna die. One big job, Arthur. That’s all we need. And then… then, we’re gone.”

Arthur’s eyes narrow a little, but he smokes some more instead of speaking.

Those words just don’t comfort him like they might have even a month before.

Now, they seem hollow, and they keep him up at night.

All the wondering and the worry–about the gang, about everything. It catches up to him the next morning, in the form of Miss Grimshaw.

“Mister Morgan!” she chides, as she walks to where he is splitting wood on the edge of camp.

Sweat falls down the sides of his face and he wipes it away. The swamp is sweltering. He cannot hardly walk, let alone do chores, without soaking through his shirt anymore.

“Miss Grimshaw.” He nods. “What you need?”

“Camp funds are runnin’ low. I ain’t seen you givin’.”

“I know.” Arthur sighs and hangs his head. “I know. I will. Gimme some time. I’ll– I’ll come up with somethin’.”

“Soon, Mister Morgan.”

He rests his hands on his hips and slows his breath as she walks away.

He has been meaning to go looking for leads. He’d thought about swindling some folks in town. Ambushing a coach, maybe, turn it in to that man Hosea introduced him to. There is no shortage of ways to make money, so he cannot articulate why he hasn’t lately.

Lack of motivation, maybe.

And he has been decently distracted.

He has not seen Tallulah since teaching her to shoot. But he has corresponded with her through mail, and suffered for it.

Arthur had only written her once, as Mr. Tacitus Kilgore, and only to leave her more ammunition so she need not be seen with him again. He had hidden it near their clearing, where he’d found more broken up bottles, which made him laugh. She’d certainly kept up her practice.

He had drawn up a map to show her where he’d left the boxes and sent the letter, believing he would not see or hear from her again.

Then, she’d written him back.

“Got some mail, Arthur,” Tilly had told him, when he’d come back from hunting one day, a deer carcass thrown over his shoulder.

He’d nodded and dropped the animal off on Pearson’s table with a grunt. No doubt, he would get an earful later about leaving in that way, but Arthur was exhausted and not about to skin it, too. 

“Handwriting looks like a lady,” Mary-Beth had teased, waving the letter through the air.

That had gotten his attention. He’d pulled his bloodied gloves off and taken large strides over to the girls. “A lady? Who?”

“You got a secret woman we don’t know about, Arthur?”

He’d snatched the letter away and read the return address. Saint Denis, from a Misses Iolanthe Lancaster III.

Tallulah’s letter, which he had opened only once he was alone and in the privacy of his room, had read:

_ My Dearest Tacitus, _

_ I am not quite sure as to why we must use such preposterous identities, but nevertheless, I will go along with it. _

_ I have received your gift. You are a kind and thoughtful man. I expect that I will not soon be an expert marksman, but I will keep at it until I can give you a run for your money. Just you wait and see. _

_ I find that I miss you. Do see me again. _

_ Yours most dramatically, _

_ Iolanthe Lancaster III, Duchess of Saint Denis _

That had made him smile. Her damned ridiculous fake name. And the women had caught it before he could stamp it out and given him hell for it.

Karen, most of all. She’d asked who the woman was so many times, he’d lost count. He always just said _ no one _, but that did not convince any of them.

He keeps that letter on his person. Every so often, he will read it over and consider going back under the pretense of another lesson. But that is not what is best for Tallulah, and for once, Arthur wants to do something right and good. That is the sort of man she thinks him to be, and it is who he wants to become.

He pats at the letter in his satchel—a new one, gifted to him from Charles—then goes back to chopping firewood.

He does not really want to steal, even from some rich fool. That life, that way, has lost its luster.

Instead, he resorts to bounty work.

The very next day, he rides into Saint Denis. The sheriff has a few posters up. The one that sticks out most is a man accused of drunken violence and murder.

Arthur takes that poster and heads north with it. The man was last seen around Annesburg, a town Arthur has not yet been acquainted with.

It is more than a day’s ride away. He arrives in the mining town late in the evening at a very indecent hour, so he gets a room and tries to rest.

His nightmares are no better, but they have changed. Tallulah does not die anymore.

The gang does.

Arthur rolls his shoulders, pops his back when he wakes. His attempt at shrugging it all off.

Before he leaves, he reads her letter again. He thinks for a moment about responding.

He doesn’t even know what he would say.

He gets up and puts on his boots, buttons his shirt, pulls on his suspenders. His hat goes on last, when he’s mounted back on Ptolemy.

“You’re a good boy,” he tells his horse, patting his neck. Arthur coaxes him into a trot and they head out of the small town, eastward.

He is not real sure what to look for. Some camp and a man who looks roughly like the sketch on the poster, he supposes.

He references the drawing once more. A _ Mr. Stratton Harvey _.

Once Arthur is out of the trees, he can see a distant pillar of smoke rising from the forest.

He sighs, but it turns half way through into a sad, breathy laugh. If that is Stratton, he’s a stupid bastard.

The man hunched over the fire is surrounded by empty bottles. He looks—and smells—like he hasn’t bathed too recently.

And his mustache, however unkempt it is now, however unlike the bounty sketch, is what convinces Arthur that this is his man.

“Stratton!”

The man looks up, a crazed look in his eye. “No—get away from me!”

He tries to scramble away, but the alcohol does not do him any favors. He trips over his tent and it collapses onto him.

Arthur just sighs as the man frantically tries to escape the canvas atop him. In his panic, he is easily hogtied. Arthur throws him over his shoulder and then roughly onto the back of his horse.

“C’mon,” he grunts under the weight of the man, “got a cell in Saint Denis with your name on it.”

“I—agh—I didn’t do it. This’s all… all wrong. I never hurt nobody. Di’n’t even start that gunfight—”

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Arthur demands. A headache is flaring up already at the man’s incessant pleading.

He goes on and on, in between hiccups. How he didn’t do it, Arthur has the wrong man, how some other man had killed his brother. It is all very convincing.

Finally, Arthur just smacks him, and the rest of the ride is pretty quiet. He rides Ptolemy a bit harder, sick of the road.

Sick of violence, and beating men and tying them up.

Tallulah’s letter burns through his satchel.

The deputy on duty when Arthur gets back into the city that evening is pleased by his quick return.

“Didn’t expect you back so soon.” Arthur follows him back to a cell and tosses a groggy Stratton onto the floor, where he groans and mumbles complaints. The deputy’s brow furrows. “Although, he never was the brightest. I suppose that’s to be expected.”

“I can see that,” Arthur gestures to Stratton.

“Here—fifty dollars. As promised.”

Arthur takes the money and counts it. When he is sure it’s all there, he gives a lazy salute to the deputy and thanks him.

Outside, the sun is setting and the city is all golden light and shadows. Saint Denis seems to settle in the evening. It is most bearable then, so he does not leave right away.

He has a warm meal in the saloon, and then he lingers and watches the people there, engaged in their vices.

He cuts through the park. Goes out of his way to get there, just to walk and think. To try, at least, to understand when criminal endeavors became so repulsive to him.

He sits on a bench beneath a streetlight as the sun sinks lower beneath the horizon and thinks he will write some.

Against his better judgement, he ends up penning a letter.

_ Iolanthe, _

_ You will make a fine gunslinger. I’m sure of that. I pity the bastard dumb enough to cross you. If you don’t end up shooting him, you will surely throw your weapon at him with deadly force. _

_ Reckon you won’t need to be shooting anyone for a long while, though._

_ You shouldn’t write me no more. I know I’m a foolish man. If I were not, I would not write you, but for your sake, you should forget about me. _

_ Take care. _

_T. K._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just think letter-writing is the sweetest.
> 
> xoxo


	6. VI. Savagery and Redemption

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it’s the holiday season, which means the anxiety is peaking, babes. Thanks for all your patience and supportive comments!!
> 
> xoxo

Arthur is awakened early in the morning from a dead sleep by Dutch, who is already plotting.

“Rise and shine, Arthur,” he says cheerily, flinging open the balcony doors and letting in scorching sunlight. “Got some work for you.”

“It can’t wait?” Arthur moans, an arm slung across his eyes.

“Aw. I’m sorry. Did I interrupt your beauty sleep?”

It takes a great deal of effort, but Arthur forces himself into a sitting position and rubs the sleep from his eyes. “What is it?”

“Micah found a stage comin’ out of the city around noon. One guard, a driver, and a single, wealthy passenger.”

“Oh, he did, did he? What’s the take?”

Dutch smiles. This particular smile seems darker than the rest, but then, Arthur thinks it may just be the shadow his hat casts across his face. Either way, Dutch looks more devil than man in that moment. “Oh–the take is good.”

And despite how tired he is, despite how unappealing working with Micah sounds, Arthur does what he always does. He does not really know how to do anything else.

He gives in.

“Okay. Sure.” He nods.

He sits up and stretches and braces himself for a long day. When Dutch leaves him, he gets to dressing himself. It does not take long to make himself decent, or as decent as he can be expected to look. Then, he puts his hat on, lights a cigarette, and makes his way down to the horses.

Micah is smoking beneath a nearby tree, and Arthur barely acknowledges him.

“Micah.”

“Cowpoke.”

Arthur quietly adjusts his saddle. He packs away some food and brushes down Ptolemy. All the while, Micah just watches, and then he puts out his cigarette in the dirt and mounts his horse.

“You about ready there, Miss Priss?” Micah sneers, spitting on the ground.

Arthur lets out a small grunt and he mounts his horse. He wraps the reins around one of his hands as he coaxes Ptolemy forward, following after Micah. “Be quiet, would you?”

“You know, Dutch told me you wasn’t actin’ right. Said you might be in a _ mood _.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“Nothin’—just that your head ain’t been with us lately.”

Arthur glares out at the open expanse before them. It’s all mud and fog, as gloomy as he feels. “You ain’t never been with us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I ain’t been nothin’ but loyal to Dutch–”

“Don’t test my goddamn patience, Micah,” Arthur growls, grinding his teeth together. “Just ‘cause we got a job together don’t make us friends, and we ain’t gotta talk.”

“Fine. Have it your way.”

They don’t speak much beyond simple directions after that. The silence is anything but comfortable. It is tense, and partly because Arthur did not sleep well enough the night before to put up with Micah’s shit.

At least, for once, Micah’s got the sense not to keep pushing it.

They stop on a small hill overlooking the trail and Micah nods to himself. “This’ll do.” He pulls a pocket watch from his coat. It looks new, expensive. Arthur wonders who he stole it from. “Got a half an hour to kill.”

Arthur does not respond. He does not want conversation. Instead, he dismounts and checks his weapons. His repeater and his revolver, he decides, could use a good cleaning. The revolver first, in case this job goes south.

And knowing Micah, what with his irritating nature and general lack of sense, it just might.

As it turns out, his revolver is all he has time for. He puts it back together and is reaching for his repeater when Micah hollers at him.

“There! Get ready, Morgan,” he hisses.

Arthur pulls his bandana up onto his nose and loads his gun quickly. He keeps it low. Rests it on his thigh, so the situation does not escalate unnecessarily.

Micah takes the lead. He rides his horse up the trail, and when the coach is close enough, breaks out of the trees and cuts them off. The horses all whinny and huff as they slow.

He cannot hear the exchange between the guard and Micah. Just a lot of shouting. Arthur gets closer to the coach, and a young girl–can’t be much more than eight–peeks her head out of the window to see what is happening and his heart just about stops.

“Micah,” he calls hoarsely, and then he clenches his jaw and the second time, it comes out loud and angry, “_ Micah! _Don’t–”

A pistol fires and the shot echoes, hangs in the air with the gun smoke.

He does not need to look to see that the guard is dead. From the corner of his eye, he can see his body slump.

No, Arthur’s eyes are on the girl, the way she covers her ears and breathes quickly, watching the scene with wide eyes like she cannot quite believe what she is seeing.

Arthur is all sharp movements as he hops onto the ground. Micah is walking toward him; or rather, he is walking toward the coach.

It’s always about the goddamn money.

The rich man–their target–exits the coach, hands raised, trembling and sweating. “What– what do you want? Please– I’ll do anything. Just d-don’t hurt my little girl.”

Micah points his gun at the man’s chest. “Won’t have to hurt no one else, long as you give us all you got.”

There is a whimper from the carriage, the girl half reaching for her father.

“Just leave ‘em, Micah, _ for Christ’s sake _.”

“Check the lock box, Morgan.”

Arthur’s eyes narrow and he is _ so angry, _he’s shaking. Like a fool, he had believed that even Micah was beyond this level of filth. “You can’t be goddamn serious.”

Micah grins. “Oh, I’m always serious.”

Arthur watches, almost more shocked than angry now, as Micah circles around to the back of the coach and shoots the lock box open.

In front of him, the man refuses to meet Arthur’s eyes. But the girl does, and that is worse. She looks at him like she does not understand, and Arthur looks away when he feels too much shame.

They need money, but not this badly.

In that moment, seeing Micah loot and fill his pockets, seeing that scared child and her cowering father, Arthur remembers something Reverend Swanson had said once. About gaining the world and forfeiting your soul.

Micah orders the man back into the coach and he obeys, still fearing for his life. He tells the driver to go on ahead and then starts counting bills, like the remorseless rat he is.

Arthur snaps. The coach can’t have driven more than ten feet away from them when he suddenly grabs Micah by the collar and starts shouting at him.

“You said it was _ one goddamn passenger _–”

“I said it was a rich man.”

“You didn’t say nothin’ about a _ kid _ in the goddamn coach, you fool!”

Micah’s lip curls up into a snarl and he pushes Arthur’s away roughly. “I didn’t know. But we got paid. She didn’t get hurt.”

Arthur breathes heavy in his anger. His eyes close and he pinches the bridge of his nose to keep his hands from strangling Micah. He has never been quite so tempted. “Get the hell away from me. I don’t wanna see you for a goddamn _ week _, at least!”

Micah backs away from him, shaking his head. “You’re not right, Morgan. Not right.”

Arthur just glares at him until he disappears. And then, alone, he remembers the girl’s expression. How terrified she had been—terrified of _ him. _

He has to take a minute to kneel and breathe and calm himself, but the panic in him does not really go away. Not lately.

It is hours later against the counter of the Bastille saloon that his body finally relaxes. All except his shoulders, which are tight with nerves, all bunched up and knotted.

It has been bad before. Just not this bad. Not ever so bad that Arthur could not see a way out.

So, he drinks. There is little else to do, but drink and brood and worry. It is all out of his control and spiraling at an alarming rate, and Arthur is powerless to stop it.

He is alone during all of this, so deep in his own mind that he hardly realizes when there is suddenly a man at his elbow. Even then, he barely glances at him.

He looks the way Arthur reckons he does himself: nervous. Lines on his forehead carved deep into the skin.

He does not order anything. Arthur doesn’t take notice until the man clears his throat and drops his head.

Without turning to him, the man asks, “Arthur Morgan?”

Arthur tosses back more whiskey and then he slowly shakes his head. “No, sir, you have me confused.”

“No, I don’t.” The man looks around and then pulls an envelope from his jacket pocket. He stares at it, flips it over in his hands. “Do me a favor ‘n don’t play stupid. You know, I could be killed for this.”

“What you talkin’ about?”

“I’ll… I’ll most likely be killed anyway.” He pauses and rubs at his eyes. They are red and sleepless, and again, Arthur sees himself. “Colm is… he’s a bitter man. Doesn’t forgive too easy.”

Arthur straightens up. His hand goes to his pistol but he does not yet draw. “Well I ain’t the forgivin’ type neither. What the hell you after?”

The O’Driscoll dog looks at Arthur’s fingers wrapped around the handle of his gun, and then locks eyes with him. He does not seem fearful, not like his words would have Arthur thinking he would be.

His eyes are resigned, more than anything. Dead.

He hands Arthur the envelope. “What they got planned—it’s too much. I know I’m no saint, but I can’t… can’t do _ this _.”

Arthur takes the envelope and examines it. There is no writing on it, that he can see. “What is it?”

“We killed a lot of men. Dutch, he said, _ Dutch _was the woman-killer. Now… he’s getting older. More desperate. I don’t know what it is. I just know I won’t be a party to it.”

Arthur does not know what that means, but he does not ask. Just tears open the envelope and unfolds the paper inside.

It is a map of some kind. The layout of a home, he realizes, with the first floor on one page and the second floor on another. There are x’s in a few places and one room is circled, a _ ‘T’ _ in the center.

He almost asks what it is he is looking at, but then, the man has already left.

So Arthur looks it over again and again. None of it makes a lick of sense.

Until he sees _ ‘Montgomery homestead’ _scrawled, small and illegibly, in the bottom right corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed my tumblr name to electriicfleur, come bother me and talk about how much you love TB cowboy man.
> 
> xoxo


	7. VII. Thicker Than Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {Canary-Joy Williams}
> 
> xoxo

Arthur sits up many nights on the Montgomery porch. Just close enough to Tallulah’s window that he will hear if she should need him.

Mostly, he spends those nights looking at that map of their home and the markers and dollar signs drawn all over it. He is nauseous thinking about all the homes he and John have robbed. How they sometimes left bodies inside.

He had told himself they needed to. Needed the money, needed the food. Whatever they stole was out of necessity.

Now, he thinks maybe he was just rotten from the start.

John was better, though. The kid always was a worse criminal than Arthur. He was too loud and too honest and Dutch should have cut him loose long ago so he could have made something good of himself.

This, now—this is what Arthur deserves.

Arthur thinks so much when he is on guard duty that it hurts his damn head. He smokes a few more cigarettes than he probably should, and in his mind, he is throttling Colm and Sadie is beside him, smiling wickedly.

By the time the sky starts to lighten each morning, every one of his muscles is sore. It hurts to walk, but he does, not too keen on getting caught hanging around. Not sure what he’d say in his defense.  _ Really  _ not wanting to meet Tallulah’s daddy or brothers.

He always seems to come back to camp tired and angry and sad. He makes a habit of falling asleep fully clothed, boots and all, so exhausted is he.

The fourth day, he gets only a few hours of sleep in before he wakes, chest tight and breathing ragged. He sits up to try to calm himself but he knows it won’t do any good.

Feels like he is being strangled, but he knows he is not.

It has happened before. It will happen again. Those dreadful moments when he can smell all the blood on his hands, when he is overwhelmed by it.

He gulps down air desperately, makes all kind of  _ please God, not yet  _ pleas in his head until his heart stops pounding. Seems like it takes a long time, like these episodes might finally steal his breath and keep it. But it does stop—muscles unclench and his jaw slackens and then, he drags himself to the wash bucket to rinse the sweat from his forehead.

Mary-Beth sees him, holding himself over the water, still coming down from the panic.

“You don’t look too good, Arthur,” she says, a current of concern strong in her voice. That catches the attention of the other women nearby, mending clothes.

He laughs it away. Wipes a hand down his face to get the excess water off his skin and from his beard, which has grown too long for his liking. “I’ll be okay. Don’t you worry ‘bout me.”

They all look at him and at each other and Arthur swallows. He knows the women see the lie in his words, but he shakes his head when Mary-Beth speaks up again.

“You been—”

“No. Don’t you—no. Plenty of things you should be worried about now and I ain’t one of ‘em.”

She goes quiet at the sharpness in his voice but the look in her eyes is unsatisfied. Arthur turns away from it, mumbles about chores that need doing.

He is old and panic has come upon him that way so many times that it is hardly worth discussing.

Arthur tends to the horses, fixes up one of the wagons that was broke down. Before he realizes it, the sun is setting and he slips away again, though not before Pearson asks him to bring back some meat and Dutch shoots him a look of suspicion.

It does not matter, not really.

Arthur does not think much about it, just feels the sense of duty in his bones and moves. He mounts his horse, both of them tired, and steers him toward the lights of Saint Denis.

He does not know how he always seems to make such a mess of things—just knows that somehow, he will right this. If it costs him his damn life.

When he arrives at the Montgomery homestead, he sits up on that same, familiar porch. He is too angry to be tempted to sleep. Too riled to even sit, so he paces. One of the boards creaks, and he pauses to see if he was heard, ready to flee in an instant.

He settles when he hears nothing. Arthur sighs quietly and scans the horizon, only to see more nothing.

For a moment, it is peaceful again. But the moment is soon over, ended when he sees a figure approaching. He trains his shotgun on it, squinting because it does not look like an O’Driscoll.

Does not look like a man at all.

Arthur curses beneath his breath.

“...Arthur?”

She asks it hesitantly, as if he might spook like some animal if she speaks too loud or too quickly.

He lowers his weapon, sighing through his nose. His heart slows and he looks around quickly, satisfied when he sees no other movement. 

“Scared the hell outta me, woman.” He gestures to her riding clothes. “What are you, uh—”

“What are you doing here?”

“I…” He scratches the back of his neck and scrambles for words. “Well, I…”

“You weren’t robbing us.”

“No. No,” Arthur says quickly, fervently. “Never.”

Tallulah crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what else I’m supposed to think.”

“I was just… I was… uh, guardin’ the house.”

The words sound silly leaving his mouth. Arthur winces.

“Fine job you’ve done. Protecting my home from  _ me _ .”

He can see that he has gone and made her angry. He levels her with a serious look. “I weren’t gonna shoot you.”

She huffs. “Well—who are you trying to shoot?”

“Bad men.” He pauses, does not really want to tell her, but she keeps staring and the words fall out on their own. “O’Driscolls.”

“ _ Colm  _ O’Driscoll?”

“If I see him, sure.”

Tallulah softens some.

She is a smart woman. He knows she can piece it together on her own, why he is here. That they have been somehow targeted.

She takes a seat on the porch steps and goes quiet. Arthur cannot help but go to her and sit beside her.

“Someone wants to hurt my family,” she says, looking up at him. He sees apprehension there, beside a rage that is small but kindling. He does not want to stoke that.

Arthur sniffs and looks away. Shakes his head. “I don’t know. Reckon they just want money, mainly.”

“Why us?”

He stares into the ground for a time. Arthur should have expected she would ask that.  _ Why _ the Montgomerys,  _ why _ these men seemed hellbent on this family, though of course  _ he knows. _

There are a few things that can make men crazed, more like animals than humans anymore. Money and revenge were among them, and the Montgomerys offer opportunity for both.

Arthur knows what Colm is capable of. He is reminded every time his shoulder aches.

He does not let himself think what Colm might do to Tallulah.

“Some folks is just that way, I guess,” he tells her softly, trying to convey that he is apologetic, really and truly sorry for all this.

But that is not wholly honest. He is to blame, he knows. Doesn’t much matter that he did not mean to get her mixed up in his mess.

“Probably don’t help that they seen you with me,” he adds, wearily.

He sees so many more questions in her eyes. When she does not ask them, he thinks she will leave, or maybe tell him to get off her property, stay the hell away from her.

Instead, she holds his eyes until his cheeks are warm.

He clears his throat. “You should go on to bed.”

She scoffs.

“It ain’t safe, Tallulah. Now, I mean it. Go on—”

“This is  _ my _ family.  _ My home. _ ”

They stare each other down for a few heartbeats. He tries to look menacing, tries to show her he is not who she thinks he is, but then, he does not know who she thinks he is anymore.

He leans closer to her, eyes full of a ferocity that he hopes will make her understand. She is close and so warm and  _ too goddamn good _ . She belongs far away from all of this, this stupid feud that he intends to end with his own hands. “You don’t know these men. They’re killers, Lulah. Bad men, and they won’t hesitate to shoot you… or worse.”

“You know them.”

“Sure.” He nods. “I’m a bad man, too.”

Her eyes crease at the corners. “How many nights have you done this?”

Arthur leans back and trains his eyes on their surroundings. They are still alone, but he is more nervous with her here. “A few.”

Tallulah stands and brushes her pants off. She leans against a post and watches the trees, insistent on staying.

He could argue, but he has an idea about how well that might go. So, he does not, and lights another cigarette instead.

“Why did you come?” she asks.

He watches the end of his cigarette burn. The edges of the paper curl and glow as he lets time slip by.

“Colm is a bastard.” He takes another drag and says, “Might even be worse than me.”

They stay there for a long time in silence, Arthur kicking himself for letting her stay. But her company feels nice and she is too headstrong a woman to be pushed around.

He wonders who that man in the bar was. Why she is scared of all the wrong things, like guns, and yet will sit out all night on her porch with a dirty outlaw.

Eventually, she answers that for him.

“You don’t seem so bad to me, Arthur Morgan.” 

She says it quietly but with the conviction of someone who has made up their mind. Arthur just shakes his head against the relief those words bring him.

She ought to hold this against him.

She is a goddamn reckless woman. Foolish, really, coming so near to him willingly.

Reckless and foolish and stubborn and he will keep her safe if it kills him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t explain how wonderful it has been, reading all your comments. Wow. I’m overwhelmed and humbled and just. Thank you x 1 million.
> 
> xoxo


	8. VIII. Judge, Jury, Executioner

After much argument with himself, Arthur lends Tallulah his rifle.

“Might as well,” he grumbles, thrusting it into her surprised hands, “if you insist on stayin’.”

She only stares at the rifle. Seems it takes her a while to get accustomed with each new weapon she is given. She looks more scared of it, that rifle, than she did his revolver.

“Ain’t gonna shoot you on its own,” Arthur tells her.

“I know that.”

Arthur nods, though he does not believe her. He smiles to himself as he looks back out across the property.

There is something innocent and sweet about the way she distrusts all weapons. Something that draws him in, and it’s that very thing he is guarding more than anything else.

Not things. Not money.

He cares less and less for money these days, and he knows, if her home is anything to go by, that her family would recover from a robbery just fine.

She tightens her grip on the rifle and frowns up at him. He sees it in his periphery but does not meet her eyes. “When did you first use a gun?”

“Real young.”

“In self-defense.”

Arthur laughs dryly and thinks of his father. All of his memories are bitter. “No.”

Tallulah watches his hands as he lights a cigarette. She lets him finish it, but he knows he has not satisfied her. Only raised more questions.

God willing, she finally understands. Finally sees the sickness in him and does not want it for herself.

“To steal,” she says, timidly.

Arthur studies her. She already knows, he is sure. She has started to look at him the same way as the rifle, and she has at last abandoned all ideas that he is anything but a no good criminal. 

But she is still here, so he hardens his gaze. “Yeah.” He steps closer to her, slowly, doing his best to show her the side of him people see before they die by his hand. His eyes go cold and he stops less than a foot away from her. “For stealin’. _ Killin’ _. Shot a lot of people.”

Her brow twitches, but she does not react. She is a resilient thing, he will give her that.

Arthur leans away from her, shaking his head and sighing. 

Tallulah stays that night, silent and thoughtful beside him, and says nothing more. It is the next night that he starts believing she has finally come to her senses because she does not come down to meet him like he has started to expect.

Arthur leans against the side of her house. He fools himself into thinking he is not waiting for anyone, that he is not disappointed when time passes and he is still alone. But then, Tallulah rounds the corner, and he lets out a breath.

She does not address him. He watches as she grabs the rifle from his horse, which he has taken to hitching along the railing.

It is as if the gun belongs to her now. It may as well, he thinks. Maybe, when this is all over and done with, he will give that one to her also.

She sits on the steps beside him. Arthur watches her, but she does not look his way. Not once.

He is unprepared for the way that stings him.

“Thought you’d wanna sleep some tonight,” he says after a few minutes, to test the waters. “You ain’t gotta be here.”

“I want to protect my family.”

He nods and scratches at his jaw. “Alright.”

They keep watch and Arthur feels his stomach flipping. She makes him that way. He had thought he had wanted this, some distance between himself and Tallulah, but it does not feel right.

He will not try to mend it. Best to leave well enough alone.

“You’re in a gang.”

He glances at her and away, back to the fog settling around them. His jaw works as he tries many times to answer her but then, he is not so sure he wants her to know that side of him, or to lose the easy trust she has in him, or that undeserved admiration.

Some of it, surely, has already slipped away.

“Sure,” he admits.

“Like the O’Driscolls.”

“Not really. Least, we try not to be.”

“What do you steal?”

“Money. Food, supplies, just about anything, I s’pose.”

“Why aren’t you robbing us, then?”

He turns his head toward her. Tallulah is near, nearer than he has been to any woman in—Christ, he doesn’t know. He finds she makes it that much harder to think, and he was never very good at thinking to begin with.

Arthur grunts as he stands, choking out every improper thought. He leans against one of the beams on the porch and keeps his head low and eyes hidden.

Dutch would ask him the same damn thing, why he isn’t swindling this rich family.

He had not even thought to take from her, if he is very honest with himself. Maybe that makes him a bad outlaw—or a good one. He does not know anymore.

“No more questions,” he says gruffly.

She does not press him. He is sure she wants to, but she decides to rein in her relentless curiosity. At least until the next night, when she unleashes it once more.

“What is it like?” she asks.

“What is what like? Killin’ folk?”

“Being an outlaw. Living that way.”

“You sure got a lot of questions.”

“Just answer me, Arthur, please?”

He sighs quietly. “It’s... a lot of runnin’ away.”

She gets a look on her face that is not quite pity, but something close, and there is a sadness in her eyes for him. “Aren't you ever scared?”

He pulls the brim of his hat lower. “Used to be, maybe. Reckon I’m used to it now.”

“That all sounds... very lonely.”

She waits for him to say he is used to that, too.

He doesn’t.

They go on like that. Every night she has questions and they come to an agreement, one question for each night. That is about all Arthur can handle.

Sometimes, she spends a great deal of time deciding what to ask. She will sit all night and think and finally ask him when the sun is rising. Other times, she asks him almost as soon as she sees him, as if she cannot stand to wait.

One night, she asks him, “Have you been to jail?”

“Couple times,” he confesses.

“What for?”

He grumbles, “That’s two questions.”

“_ Arthur Morgan _.”

“Drunkenness. Got caught stealin’ a few times.”

“Where?”

“Jesus, woman,” he groans, rubbing a hand over his face. “No more of that. You’re agin’ me.”

Tallulah focuses on the rifle, tracing the notches in the metal. She looks concentrated, but he wonders if he’s really just hurt her.

“Hey. Don’t– I didn’t–” Arthur reaches a hand out, unsure where to put it. It eventually falls back to his side. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “That’s just fine, Mister Morgan. I don’t need to know these things.”

He tilts her chin up with the knuckle of his index finger. She does not seem angry, but uncertain. 

He does not want to make things any worse but he does have a question of his own.

“Tell me ‘bout that man.”

She stiffens. “There are a lot of men.”

“The man in the bar. One who spit at you.”

Tallulah takes a deep breath and lets it out in a quick huff. “He was my fiancé, once.”

Arthur tries not to look as surprised as he is. “Fiancé.”

“He laid his hands on me. My daddy, my brothers, none of them would ever hit a woman. I didn’t think my husband should, either.”

He nods and clenches his jaw as he glares down at the ground. Had he known that before, he would not have let the man live.

“I know he hates me now. I know I embarrassed him, but… but you shouldn’t hit a woman. It isn’t right.”

It is clearer now why she had wanted a gun and for the first time, he does not feel so bad for giving her one.

Arthur sighs. “Don’t think he’ll be botherin’ you any now.”

She looks at him with more questions. Arthur does not steal so much as a glance at her, lest he confess what he’s done.

In a strange way, she makes him want to. She has a power he does not understand, one that makes him want to be whoever she believes he is.

Just then—

Movement.

Arthur’s hands are instantly on his rifle and he holds his breath. He has to squint to see through the fog and darkness. He is absolutely still as minutes go by until he sees man-shaped shadows and a small and flickering light in the distance.

“Arthur, what–”

“Wait here. Don’t move,” he instructs in a low voice, eyes never straying from the figures in the distance.

He stands slowly and keeps to the side of the house so he does not give himself away. When he breaks away toward the edge of the property, he does his best to stay immersed in night.

He will surely be outnumbered. His only advantage is to take them by surprise.

There is a single lantern lit in the trees giving the O’Driscolls away. He gathers they are using it to look over that map again, the one of the Montgomery homestead.

He settles behind a tree. It is far enough away that he should not be seen, but close enough that he can hear them.

Arthur aims his rifle. The leader will die first, and then he will pick off the rest.

“–bankers can’t shoot worth a damn, anyway. Too soft. Didn’t need this many men.”

“He got sons.”

“So? They ain’t gonna be any better than their pa.”

Five men. Arthur can take three of them almost instantly.

His finger rests on the trigger.

“–the fireplace. Elliot, check the drawers. And _ close ‘em _ this time, you goddamn moron–”

“What about the girl?”

Arthur holds his breath. Steadies his hands.

“Leave her for last. She’s gonna scream. Money is the priority, we’ll get to the girl if we can.”

He fires.

Three shots. Two of them kill on impact. The third shot lands in the chest of one of the men, leaves him wheezing but still alive. In all the chaos, the horses rear and neigh and attempt to bolt.

There is a moment of scrambling. The last two men find cover and with the lantern fallen, it is hard to tell where.

Arthur curses and searches for any trace of the men.

The dying groans of someone clinging to life fill the air. The sound does not bother Arthur like it should. Like it would Tallulah.

He edges, quiet and vigilant, toward where he last saw the survivors. There are no signs of them—until he hears the click of a hammer being pulled back.

Arthur moves closer to the noise. It is all the tell he needs to locate the source and sneak up behind the man and put a bullet in him.

The last man tries to run.

A shot is fired, quicker than Arthur can even lift his weapon. The man falls, and Arthur turns toward the sound.

Tallulah drops her weapon.

“What the hell are you doin’? What did I _ goddamn say _about waitin’?”

“I—” Her tears are already building, a shine in her eyes and a thickness in her throat. “I was– I wanted to help, Arthur, I didn’t—”

He pulls her against his chest just as the sobs start. They roll through her body and make her shake and he just holds her tighter.

“That’s okay, you’re okay. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” he repeats against her ear.

She starts shaking even worse. He was supposed to prevent this but look at what he’s gone and done now.

“You’re okay, sweetheart. Shhh, hey. It’s okay.” His hand holds her head tightly against his neck and his voice cracks.

At least she is safe. At least she’s still here and he does not need to bury her.

That has to count for something. One good thing amidst all the bad he has done.

“_ I didn’t want to kill anyone _,” she cries.

“I know. You won’t have to no more.”

“_ I don’t like guns _.”

“No more guns, darlin’, I promise.”

He does not dwell on that, what he’s promising. In the moment, he knows only that he means what he says.

Arthur tells her she is safe now, that no one will hurt her, how well she did, and Tallulah begs him to come back. She does not want him leaving for good and he is too weak to insist on it, despite knowing he caused all this in the first place.

If only to sate her, he says he will see her again. It is the only thing that stops her crying enough to go back home and sleep.


	9. IX. On Finding and Losing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some good ole family drama in this one. I love Johnny Marston <3333
> 
> Also, you probably noticed, I changed the name of the fic. I was never in love with the first title but I thought not having a title was a dumb reason not to start posting. I AM in love with the new one, though—sorry if it confuses anyone!!
> 
> xoxo

It is clear to everyone in camp that Arthur has been running around, even if they don’t know where he gets off to.

Not one of them mentions it. They do give him looks, though—like they doubt him and his loyalty. Like one day, he might leave and not come back.

Dutch makes small comments here and there. About how tired Arthur is lately, how he seems to find time for everything but work.

He manages to work jibes into nearly every conversation. Even when Hosea is telling Arthur about some fancy party he will have to attend.

“It’s at the mayor’s house in Saint Denis—and before you ask, yes, you will need to dress a little nicer than usual.”

Arthur shakes his head and mumbles, “Course. Always me that’s gotta dress up.”

“Well now, it couldn’t be John, could it? He’d need a haircut and a bath and we just don’t have the time or money to make him presentable.”

“That’s fair,” Arthur laughs.

And Hosea, he smiles. It makes him so happy to see it. The old man has been in a bad way, real sickly and quiet. Arthur never says how seeing it makes his heart ache. He doesn’t say how seeing Hosea well enough to be smart again makes him happy, either.

It is almost like the beginning of everything. Just the three of them and their schemes.

Except for how it isn’t.

Dutch remains stoic. He looks like he is thinking deeply and that is always dangerous in one way or another. 

“I don’t know, Hosea—Arthur has other  _ irons in the fire _ at the moment, don’t you, boy?” he says, clapping Arthur’s shoulder.

Arthur shakes his head and holds back a weary sigh.

“Leave him alone, Dutch,” Hosea pleads.

Dutch throws his hands up. It is a fake surrender that Arthur is well-acquainted with. One that means he is not quite ready to let things go.

“All I mean is Arthur’s been gone most nights. Might be  _ unavailable _ for the evening.”

But Arthur has had about enough of it. He stands and looks to the side of Dutch. He knows he cannot look him in the eye.

It takes him a moment to muster the courage to speak what he wants to—a moment in which he thinks on much, but mostly John. Who left so long, without one word, and returned after they had stopped expecting it.

“I know I been gone, Dutch, but…” One of his hands falls to his gun belt. The other points to Dutch. “But I  _ always _ come back.”

He walks away, then, to the edge of camp. Decides to relieve Bill of guard duty. He smokes through a whole pack of cigarettes by the time Sadie comes to take over.

He can’t even make it to his bed without someone giving him some other thing that needs doing.

Strauss has two lenders for him to beat sense into. Arthur only fights him weakly.

“You know, there was a time, before you came around, when we would give people money as was fallen on hard times and let ‘em keep it.”

“So I hear,” he says, stepping carefully around Arthur’s temper, and wisely so. The slithering bastard. “But circumstances have changed. If we’re going to leave—”

“We need money, I know. I heard it all before. Just get me the names.”

“Of course, Mister Morgan.”

Arthur frowns and takes the paper he is handed. It disgusts him so much that he loses his appetite. He goes to bed without dinner and only sleeps after hours of staring at the ceiling, because it was only the night before that he had seen Tallulah cry.

The guilt keeps his mind working until the early morning hours.

He is overworked and tired. Arthur takes to sleeping at odd times in odd places. He will nod off against a wagon, find his eyes closing longer with each blink as he feeds the horses.

It’s as he’s falling asleep beneath the shade of a tree, when he had only really meant to rest for a minute, that John kicks his leg.

Arthur jolts awake. Sees that it’s John and grumbles to himself, “Can’t get no  _ damn peace _ .”

“Where the hell you been?”

Laying back onto the ground, Arthur closes his eyes and pulls his hat down over his face. “Tahiti.”

“You ain’t funny.”

“What the hell you want, Marston?”

“Got a job, if you want it.”

“Yeah? What’s it pay?”

“Couple hundred, at least.”

That is a decent sum. Enough to pique Arthur’s curiosity. He sighs deeply, trying to muster the energy to sit up. “What is it? I ain’t doin’ no more trains.”

“It ain’t a train. It’s some farm, back near Valentine.”

“What’re you stealin’, livestock again?” Arthur runs a hand over his face and stands, grunting. “You never learn a goddamn thing.”

John bristles and it feels as if they are boys again. They had never gotten along all that well, what with John always crowding Arthur, never leaving him any space. And then, he had given them all too much space and up and left.

Left Dutch and Hosea, and when Hosea was in a bad way, always drunk and miserable in his grief.

Arthur could forgive John leaving him—hell, he even understood why he might want to. But the others did not deserve the shit he pulled.

“Would you  _ let that go _ ?” John growled. “I ain’t that stupid. They got a stash, in the barn. It’s a lot of cash and it’s a mile outside of town.”

“Naw, I ain’t goin’ back to Valentine and you shouldn’t, neither. Be an idiot if you did. They still ain’t forgiven us.”

“You scared of a man with a shotgun now?”

Arthur stops everything. Does not even breathe. He levels Marston with a fearsome look and John shrinks a little. He always tries not to, but he never was able to stand up to Arthur like he did so often with Dutch.

John does not care what many people say. Arthur is the exception.

“Find someone else.” Arthur grits his teeth. “If I wanted to steal from workin’ people, I’d ask Strauss.”

Before John can say anything smart, Arthur is already walking away and into the house.

It’s better if they do not fight. Arthur is already so damn tired.

* * *

He waits days.

He checks the post office, half expects Tallulah to write and say she has changed her mind. That he has done quite enough and she has not had so much trouble as she’s endured since meeting him.

No letter comes.

He is left without excuse not to see her. Which is just fine—he sleeps like hell anyway, worrying himself sick over how he left her.

It takes him more days after that to work up the nerve to return. Takes him hours to remind himself she does not hate him, or even blame him.

He decides he won’t stay long. It will be a goodbye and then he will leave for good.

It is late afternoon by the time he arrives.

He takes his hat off as he steps onto her porch. He does not let himself think before he knocks this time.

The woman who answers is the same as the last time. She looks over him distrustfullly, and then with disgust, once she recognizes him.

“Afternoon, ma’am. I was just–”

“Miss Tallulah,” she calls, without breaking eye contact. “You have a caller.”

They wait in a strained quiet that makes him fidget. He does not know where to look but the woman’s gaze does not falter.

He is about to say he will come back another time, but then Tallulah is there, beaming when she sees him.

And she barrels right into him and  _ hugs _ him.

He had thought she would hate him. Lord knows he would deserve that. But instead, she clings to him like he’s her goddamn favorite person in this world.

“Hi.”

“Uh. Hi,” he chuckles, still in shock.

Arthur clears his throat awkwardly. The maidservant is still looking at him, eyeing him as she might a suspect. He keeps his arms stiff and away from Tallulah, but that does not appease her much.

One more withering look, and she finally closes the door on them.

Arthur drops his hands to Tallulah’s back. She does not let go of him. “Don’t think that woman likes me very much.”

“I don’t think she does, no.”

She tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear and steps away from him. Onto the porch, where there are memories only they know about, yet Tallulah looks at him with eyes shining. As if he is some hero, and not the villain.

Jesus. What has he done?

“Uh. How you been holdin’ up?”

Her eyes dim a little. Not much. She is not one easily cowed. “I don’t know. Well, I suppose that I– I just... I feel different.”

Arthur nods. He puts his hat back on and shifts his weight. Knowing he has failed her, he finds it difficult to look at her.

There is nothing really to say, besides how sorry he is. All the things he should have done.

“I was sick over it,” she says. “A long time. But I think I’m okay now.”

“I shoulda... told you to go inside, or… somethin’, Lulah. I’m sorry.”

“You haven’t a thing to be sorry for.”

Arthur grimaces. “Oh, I got plenty.”

They fall to silence. There is a soft breeze, a few birds chirping, but no words come to either of them.

Arthur is almost scared to speak. He knows what he ought to do, what he ought to say, and knows Tallulah most certainly won’t like it.

He walks over to a bench on Tallulah’s deck to sit. Tallulah fills the space beside him. When he looks at her, she is looking back with eyes filled with trust and he has seen that before.

Eliza is long dead now.

“Sometimes,” she starts, breath all shaky, the way it was when he sealed her fate and showed her how to shoot, “it’s like I… can’t get enough air. I don’t stop breathing but I feel faint.”

Arthur nods. He knows it, that feeling. He is only sorry she has caught it, too. “Bad business.”

“I dream about it. Most every night.”

He closes his eyes.  All he wants is to shut out what he has done. Instead, he is confronted by what he had not.

Two crosses. No names.

Maybe he should not trust himself anymore, or what he thinks he should do. Maybe he should just do the opposite.

A warm hand molds to his cheek.

“Arthur?”

“Lulah,” he shakes his head, slowly opening his eyes. She is watching him. Always does, with kind eyes and smile lines.

How misguided she is, wasting herself with him.

“I don’t think I should stay,” he tells her.

Her smile falls, little by little, and her hand falls away. She looks an awful lot like he is breaking her heart and he can’t stand to see it.

“Don’t you look at me like that, now, woman.”

“I don’t understand.”

He sighs. Words don’t ever come easy to Arthur, but even less around Tallulah. “It’s... better for you and your family if I don’t come around.”

“But… after all that we’ve been through–”

“I know.”

“Then how could you just  _ forget _ ?”

“It ain’t about forgettin’—look. Lulah, darlin’, please don’t do this to me.”

She tightens her lips and turns her face away from him. 

As much as it pains him now, seeing her hurt so, it will be worse if he lingers. So he tells himself, but his will grows weaker and weaker.

Tallulah’s fists clench. Arthur covers one with his hand.

He sighs and hangs his head. She is making this so much harder than he had thought it would be.

“What you want me to do, Lulah? Hmm?”

She touches his hands, holds them for a moment.

She does not speak until she has control of herself. Even then, a tear slips down her cheek.

“I am a fool,” she whispers, smiling weakly. “Be well, Mister Morgan.”

Her hands slip from his as she stands.  It just about kills him, watching her walk away and close her door on him. But he does not stop her because he has convinced himself that is best.

He should let it end there. Not go back, not write her. Not _draw_ her, for Christ’s sake.

But he does. He cannot think in words, so he sketches, as thunder cracks and a storm threatens to break over his little campfire outside the city.

His journal is full of her now. Every page is Tallulah. Some of her weeping, and now one of her hands.

God help him, he never was able to forget very well.

He decides to return to Shady Belle. It is late, just before midnight when he arrives.

Across camp, he sees John and Abigail arguing again. By the time he has made his way over, Abigail is tossing her hands up and walking inside the house, cursing as she goes.

Arthur is sure to stay clear of her rampage. When she is past, he eyes Marston.

“Hell’d you do this time?”

“Nothin’—that woman ain’t never happy.”

Arthur sighs. He offers John a cigarette and they both smoke one. Really, it is the most peaceable they’ve been in recent memory. It makes Arthur ache for  _ before _ —when John was just a dumbass kid with a loud mouth.

He had been annoying then. But he had felt something like family.

Now, he is as good as a stranger to him.

He wants to tell John he is scared of the way things are turning. Wants to tell him about Tallulah. But that is too honest for a man he does not know.

All he tells him is, “Be good to your woman and that kid of yours.”

“I’m tryin’ to be.”

“Well, try goddam harder.”


	10. X. Wistful Thinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {Skinny Love-Bon Iver}
> 
> xoxo

Strauss’ debtors are out of the way. The first one is a few miles northwest of the city, and the other is back just outside of Rhodes. It is well past noon by the time he has collected one debt, pried from the clenched fist of a particularly unwilling man, and it is evening before he finds the last.

Arthur dismounts soon as he is stopped at the ranch. It is in the middle of _ goddamned _ nowhere; no one to hear what might transpire.

Lucky enough for him. It should be a quick and easy conversation.

He knocks his knuckles against the door impatiently. No one comes, and he is about to bang on it again, harder, when the door opens and lantern light spills through the crack.

He can only make out half a face, but what he can see looks nervous. Like the man behind the door knows what he is in for. “We don’t have nothin’. Ain’t worth robbin’. Go on and leave us and won’t nobody have to know.”

“Mister Lanford?” Arthur asks.

The half of his face that is visible shifts. Arthur has seen that before, presses a hand to the door to push it open. It won’t budge with all the other man’s weight against it.

Fearfully, who he presumes must be Mister Lanford asks him, “What you want with him?”

“Debt’s due.”

Lanford enlooks back into the house and then again at Arthur. He must have a family.

Not so easy, then.

“I’m—” Lanford lowers his voice. “I’m workin’ on that. Got half. Few more weeks, I can give you the whole thing.”

“That weren’t the deal you made, partner. Now, unless you need some help rememberin’ the terms—”

“I know. I know, but—”

Tired, aching for this part—the debt collecting—to be done with, Arthur shoves his shoulder against the door and flings it open wide. As soon as he can grab the man by his suspenders, he finds the barrel of a shotgun pressing into his stomach.

And that is not even what really bothers him. It is the wide eyes he feels watching him from the corner and the gasps and sobs of Lanford’s startled children.

He does not know if the man would shoot, least of all in front of his family, who Arthur still refuses to look at lest he lose his nerve. But he seems a coward, and Arthur has gambled and won against cowardice before.

The man’s breath comes out shaky.

Arthur shakes that breath around in him some more as he rattles him. “You teachin’ your children not to pay their debts?”

“I can get it,” he nods quickly. “Two weeks—”

“‘Fraid I ain’t in the mood to negotiate, friend.”

From the corner of the room, a young voice calls out to his father, “Daddy!”

It does not sound like Isaac, not really. But that hardly matters. The voice belongs to a boy. A son, and a young one at that.

Gone soft, he thinks. Dutch would not so much as flinch.

But maybe he does not want to _ be like Dutch _ anymore.

He lets the man fall to the floor. Lanford keeps the gun trained on Arthur, but at this point, he does not believe that threat.

Arthur nods and sighs, looking around and not seeing much. Nothing to be taken and sold, certainly. “Where’s the half?”

Still clutching that gun so tightly, Mister Lanford—the father, and the debtor—scrambles backwards into one of the bedrooms and Arthur follows him. It is small, barely big enough for the bed and semainier within it.

He kneels down and opens a drawer and pulls from it a wad of cash. Arthur takes it from him and counts it.

The man is crying and nodding profusely. “Thank you. My wife, she passed, and I ain’t been able—”

“Two weeks.” Arthur stuffs the money into his satchel. He points a finger at Lanford and growls, “I’ll be back, and next time you ain’t got my money, I won’t be so kind. We clear on that?”

“Yeah.” His eyebrows pull together. Mister Lanford looks confused and angry, has every right to be. Arthur has no illusions about who he is. “We clear. Thank you, Mister.”

Arthur waves the gratitude off and stalks out past the children, who are breathing so quickly and loudly that he can still hear it when he is out of the house.

That sound follows him farther down the road than it should.

Strauss will not understand that. He will only count the money and see that some is missing, so Arthur makes up his mind to front the missing half. He can collect it back from Mister Lanford in two weeks’ time.

He is a little surprised he would think to do that, just to save himself the trouble of strangling some fool. It is the first time he has.

Mostly, he is startled by the fleeting thought as he turns Ptolemy away from that ranch, some sweet and familiar voice telling him he is _ not so bad, Arthur Morgan. _

He wants to chase that.

* * *

  
It storms the next day. Rumbling thunder and piercing lightning the likes of which Arthur had not seen in years, as if God Himself were angry with him.

He was supposed to see about some job of Bill’s in Rhodes, but no doubt it will have to wait for better weather. It is storming too intensely for riding, and Ptolemy never did do very well with thunder.

Bill grumbles about it. Arthur just tells him to shut his mouth.

He has not been in a charitable mood lately. Everyone knows it, and of course it would be goddamn Bill that would push him.

“Oh, lighten up, Morgan,” he snaps.

Arthur grits his teeth as he carries bales of hay in from the storm. Nearby, Pearson scrambles to save the bread and meat from being soaked through. Most everyone else has gone indoors to change their rain-soaked clothes.

Everyone excepting Bill, who always seems to have the time and generous spirit to give Arthur a piece of his mind.

“You ain’t always gotta be so bitter, you know.”

“Why don’t you make yourself _ useful _,” Arthur grunts, lifting another hay bale, “‘stead of whinin’ so goddamn much?”

“You’re a mean bastard. Gone senile already.”

He knows that, does not need any reminding. Especially now, with the way he has been. He may just backhand the fool.

“That was _ my _ job,” Bill goes on, shaking his fist at the black sky and slanted rain. “Was a real good one.”

“Well, then, I’m sure it’ll be just as lucrative tomorrow.”

“It _ won’t _.”

Arthur takes his hat off as he walks indoors. Bill starts in on why the job is ruined and he bites his tongue so he does not say any of the things he wants to. The girls are laying out towels on the floor near the entrance to wipe their boots on.

He gives Karen a single nod, meant to express that he is grateful. They do not get the credit due them.

And Shady Belle—it may not be a real home, not by a long shot, but the gang has not had such luxurious accommodations in a while.

Susan walks quickly toward him. Something about not getting water on her floor.

Arthur looks down, sees he is dripping. His boots squeak a little when he walks, which frustrates him for no real reason, and when he looks back up, Miss Grimshaw tosses the towel over his head and rubs it furiously over his damp hair.

“This—_ ah— _really necessary?”

“Won’t have you tracking water through the house, Mister Morgan.”

He groans and huffs but Miss Grimshaw does not let him alone until he is mostly dry. She dismisses him, then, and goes after Bill, who starts up another argument and won’t ever seem to just shut up.

Arthur sits on a crate near the fire, which Mary-Beth is tending, and lights a cigarette with a little too much fury in his fingers.

The warmth and the smoke on his tongue soothes his nerves some. What it does not, drink ought to.

“Are you okay, Arthur?”

The voice is Tilly’s. He turns his body to glance back at her briefly. “Course. Just grand, Miss Tilly.”

“You ain’t seemed it lately.”

“I haven’t?”

She takes a seat on one of the crates beside him. Once Mary-Beth leaves the room, the downstairs is empty and quiet, aside from the rumble of thunder and Uncle snoring in the next room.

“You been leavin’ an awful lot. You ain’t around as much no more.”

Arthur rests his elbows on his knees and nods. He knows it, feels bad for it, too.

“Is it that girl?”

Again, he bites his tongue. Never can go that long without some reminder of her, can he? How she had been when he had left and the pull in his chest to see her well again, without the death behind her eyes.

A new wave of anger comes, and he cracks his knuckles.

“How’d you meet her?”

“Oh, no.” Arthur shakes his head, cigarette held between his teeth as he pulls his gloves off. “We ain’t talkin’ about all that.”

“What’s her name?”

“Don’t see how it matters. That’s all done with now.”

“You ain’t gonna keep seein’ her?”

A good man—or a better one, at least—would say no and mean it. But Arthur is not, and he has too much conflict in him to give an answer one way or the other.

Outside of this gang, she is all he has. A gang, he worries, that is bleeding out.

“Jesus, Tilly.” He sighs and smokes some more, until his cigarette just about burns his fingers, and then he tosses it into the fire. “What you want me to say? She’s… It ain’t how you think it is. Whatever romantic ideas you girls have in your heads, it ain’t that way.”

“Not yet, maybe,” she teases.

“_ Tilly _,” he warns. “Don’t you start this.”

“Well do you like her, Arthur?”

He scratches at his cheek and stares into the fire. “Her life and mine—we’re different people.”

“All the best stories start that way.”

“Well, this ain’t no storybook.”

The fire crackles. It warms his hands and his face as he broods. There is an ache in his fingers and wrists.

He is a hard and cynical bastard. This is a familiar story which can only end one way.

“All I know is, I ain’t never seen you work this hard for someone you didn’t care for.”

Arthur grunts. “That ain’t true. I do Micah favors all the goddamn time.”

Tilly laughs, but Arthur cannot manage to. Thinking of it, he does a lot of favors he does not particularly want to do, for a lot of people he does not particularly like.

Strauss, and all those debts he recovers. Dutch, and his fool’s errands.

Tilly bids him goodnight. Arthur spends the rest of his evening alone in his room where he tries to write some.

A wiser man would not let himself dwell on what he knows are fantasies. He does not belong in Saint Denis anymore than Tallulah belongs here, with a gang of outlaws. Wouldn’t be _ right _.

But his mind lingers on old memories—on the curves of her handwriting, and he wants to write her, or see her and know she is alright.

He has enough guilt on any given night to keep him awake, and tonight especially. The words don’t feel quite right when he puts pencil to paper and he supposes that is a sign, a divine suggestion not to involve himself with the girl.

All that he manages are a few lines for himself.

_ Simple thing, to not do something. Ought to be easy. _

_ We are being hunted like animals by outlaw and lawmen alike. I know better than all this. Tallulah is better off the farther away I am. _

_ Guess I just miss someone being happy to see me. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this story officially has a cover photo???? I’m so so excited kgxoyclvlj tiesthatbind1899 made an absolutely perfect edit for me. Unprovoked, too. She is the kindest person ever and she writes so well and betas my drafts <3 If you haven’t read her story Memories of the West, then what are you waiting for? Call in sick, cancel your plans. Go read it.
> 
> Cover photo and mood board for this story are on my tumblr, electriicfleur, if you wanna check it out!
> 
> https://electriicfleur.tumblr.com/post/190816142011/yall-i-am-dyingggg-look-at-what
> 
> xoxo


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